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| Buh dah dah dah DAH dah dah dah dah |
It occurred to me that whenever one ranks a movies series, one has four possible ways to do it.
A) By personal enjoyment: Sometimes we just like things, even bad things. It could be that it is full of a vice we are attracted to (such as violent revenge flicks). It could be the nostalgia of seeing it first when we were a child. It could touch upon our pet political cause. Whatever, the reason, we like it regardless of what our higher critical faculties say.
That being said, are how I would rank the Star Wars movies by my own personal enjoyment.
1) Return of the Jedi
2) A New Hope
3) The Force Awakens
4) The Last Jedi
5) The Empire Strikes Back
6) The Rise of Skywalker
-(Tie) Revenge of the Sith
8) The Phantom Menace
9) Rogue One
10) Solo
11) Attack of the Clones
12) The Clone Wars
B) By quality as a piece of cinema: Some people are movie buffs. Some are not. But most of us can tell when a movie is written, edited, acted, directed, and shot well.
Here is my ranking of the movies as pieces of cinema::
1) The Empire Strikes Back
2) A New Hope
3) Rogue One
4) The Last Jedi
5) The Force Awakens
6) Return of the Jedi
7) Revenge of the Sith
8) Solo
9) The Rise of Skywalker
10) Attack of the Clones
11) The Clone Wars
12) The Phantom Menace
C) As a member of the series: This is tricky, because it relies on the Aristotelian form that we keep in our own minds. For instance Thor: Ragarnok is my second favorite Marvel movie because it is everything Thor should have always been--a goofy space comedy. The friend I saw it with loathed it. He believes Thor should be a dignified, unyielding viking warrior. In his view, the first Thor movie is more "Thor-esque" In mine, the third is.
So, which Star Wars movie is the most star-warsy:
1) A New Hope
- (tie) The Empire Strikes Back
3) The Return of the Jedi
- (tie) The Force Awakens
5) Revenge of the Sith
- (tie) The Phantom Menace
- (tie) The Rise of Skywalker
8) Attack of the Clones
- (tie) The Clone Wars
- (tie) Solo
11) Rogue One
12) The Last Jedi
A side note: In case it is not obvious, but I am referring to The Clone Wars movie in this article, not the TV series. Also, these three lists did not include any made for TV movies such as Caravan of Courage. They are all awful, so let's not waste our time.
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| Still a better movie than The Clone Wars, though |
D) By Critical Acclaim: As a rule, I'm deeply suspicious of popular opinion, but it is often good to check one's own ideas against someone else's. For something as low-stakes as movie rankings, the Rotten Tomato tomato meter will do. (Please note the calculations below factor in each movie's tomato meter as of January 2020.)
However, I want one list, not 4. Is there an overly complicated way I could combine these 4 to make my ultimate list of Star Wars movies? Yes, yes there is. I want to check my cinema ranking against the critics, but I want my own personal opinion to weigh more. Thus...
E) Overly complicated formula for a combined list: [(A+C)/2] + [B*(1-D)]
Epimetheus Rising's Ultimate Star Wars Ranking:
Tier 1 (Love them or be wrong)
1) A New Hope [(2+1)/2] + [2*0.07]=1.64
2) The Empire Strikes Back [(5+1)/2] + [1*0.06])=3.06
-(near tie) Return of the Jedi [(1+3)/2] + [6*0.18]=3.08
-(near tie) The Force Awakens [(3+3/2]) + [5*0.07]=3.35
Tier 2 (Sure, why not):
5) Revenge of the Sith [(6+5)/2]) + [7*0.2]=4.9
6) The Last Jedi [(4+12)/2] + [4*0.09]=8.36
7) The Rise of Skywalker [(6+5)/2 + [9*0.47]=9.73
8) Rogue One [(9+11)/2 + [3*0.17]=10.51
Tier 3 (Love to hate it or hate to love it):
9) Solo [(10+8/2)] + [8*0.3]=11.4
10) The Phantom Menace [(8+5)/2] +[12*0.47]=12.14
11) Attack of the Clones [(11+8)/2] + [10*0.35]=13
Tier 4 (not even hate-watch worthy):
12) The Clone Wars [(12+8)/2] + [11*0.82]=19.02
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3 comments:
The Return of the Jedi has a lot of really awesome scenes; but there are some of the Endor scenes that I find are too drawn out.
And Rise of Skywalker is way better than any of the sequels, and in terms of **entertainment** value, better than the prequels.
A New Hope had some of the old, "I don't know where this story is going, but I might only get to make one movie, so whatever...."; but its a nice, crisp, stand-alone movie.
(spoilers ahead).
The problems inherent in the prequels and sequels are fundamental story telling issues. The prequels had a really good/complex story; Anakin's fall to the dark side was tragic actually based in his desire to do good. But the *storytelling* was rushed. The sequels suffer from a "let's just do stars-wars-y stuff, and resolve it at the end". Luckily, the Abrams made an ending that kind-a-sort-a made sense. He should have planned it better though, so that Kylo goes through the entire arc within the sequel trilogy. (don't waste time with an even-bigger-death-star).
How about a list of under-used characters......top of the list is probably Count Dooku! Hilarious that he was an expert in cloning-dark-side-prolonging of life- it's pretty much vampire "arts" (and he was of course, Count Dracula)
This was splendid reading! I don't agree with the conclusions, but the premises are solid. It's super important before having a discussion about ranking Star Wars movies to lay down some ground rules. So often when I disagree greatly with someone's ranking, it's because were using different criteria. It's important to realize why the disagreement is there and if commonalities can be established. Well done!
P.S. I left my own opinions out of this. Please respond if you are interested in seeing my assessment.
P.P.S. I think the Thor: Ragnarok anecdote is about me. On the first viewing, I was more perplexed than horrified. Somewhere between the second and third rewatch, I recognized it's brilliance. It's always been because (not despite) the fact that Thor has such gravitas, that he can be the target of some amazing jokes. We see Thor evolve as a character where is remains stuffy, haughty and arrogant, but he can occasionally make fun of himself and have relationships of genuine endearment with the mortal races (his ongoing bromance with The Hulk is my favorite example of this). He also experiences great loss (of mother, father and homeland) which sets things up nicely for the events in Endgame. I'm happy to say that it's now one of my overall favorite movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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